U.S. urged China to let the yuan rise before the planned visit of President Hu Jintao

U.S. urged China to let the yuan rise before the planned visit of President Hu Jintao to Washington in January, setting a deadline for the results after the Group of 20 leaders failed to reach a broad agreement on currencies.

Hu's U.S. visit "Is an important moment to see exactly what the amount of progress has been" on the reforms of the Chinese currency, national security adviser Thomas Donilon told reporters today in Yokohama, Japan. The pace of movement is a "sovereign decision" and the U.S. "No doubt looking for."

The U.S. push for quick action came a day after President Barack Obama intensified his criticisms of the policies of China, called the yuan "undervalued" in the G-20 summit in Seoul. The leaders failed to agree on a remedy for the economic imbalances that threaten the global recovery, as they clashed on whether the Chinese and U.S. policies were most guilty.

"No nation should assume that your way to prosperity is simply paved with exports to America," Obama said yesterday in a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Yokohama, attended along with Hu after Seoul leftist leaders.

The yuan has risen about 3 percent against the dollar since June 19, when China said it was allowing the resumption of the assessment which was frozen in 2008. China has 2.65 trillion U.S. dollars of foreign currency reserves, more than double any other country.

'Steadily'

"China will continue to improve its monetary reform at a steady pace," Hu told reporters in Yokohama.

China had a trade surplus of 201 billion U.S. dollars with the U.S. in the first nine months of this year, more than the U.S. deficit with trading partners next seven largest combined, the Department of Commerce showed.

Chinese policy makers say that easing monetary policy of the Federal Reserve raises risks to global financial stability. More capital inflows to the region of fuel asset bubbles and inflation, Zhongxian Jin, a deputy director general of the international department of Bank of China said yesterday.

"The major issue of currency reserve printing too much money to leave their own economic difficulties, which poses a policy dilemma for emerging economies," Jin said in Macau, without naming any country.

'Indicative Guidelines "

The G-20 said that emerging markets face a wave of capital flows can take regulatory action to address, providing coverage to limit currency fluctuations as the U.S. add $ 600 billion of liquidity. The finance ministers' group will work next year on a set of "indicative guidelines, designed to identify the major economic imbalances and how to fix them, according to a joint statement issued at the summit in Seoul.

"We avoided, with luck, a currency war," said Mari Pangestu, Indonesian Minister of Trade, a member of the G-20, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. currency problems "can not be resolved bilaterally or unilaterally," he said.

Obama and Hu were among 21 APEC leaders meet in Japan after two days of talks at the summit of the G20.

The yuan fell 0.2 percent to 6.6370 per dollar as of 17:30 two days ago in Shanghai, even after the People's Bank of China set the reference rate at 6.6239, the strongest since a peg ended in July 2005, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The currency has risen 0.3 percent in the last five days, the second weekly gain.

Some Japanese business leaders have endorsed the approach of China's currency due to a sudden change would send shock waves through the global economy.

"China's current policy of moving slowly, carefully, step by step towards more flexible exchange rate regime is really the right idea," said Junichi Ujiie, chairman of Keidanren, the biggest business lobby in Japan, an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. Moving quickly would "cause confusion in the Chinese economy, which will be very difficult for the global economy."